and ʿAbd al-Aʿlā ibn Ḥammād (1); ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muʿādh al-ʿAnbarī (2); and Abū Kāmil, al-Fuḍayl ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Jahdarī (3).

[Then the year 238 AH commenced.]

In Rabīʿ al-Awwal of that year Bugha laid siege to the city of Tiflis (4), with Zayrak the Turk commanding his vanguard. The ruler of Tiflis, Ishāq ibn Ismāʿīl, sallied out to fight him but was taken prisoner. Bugha ordered that he be beheaded and crucified, and that naphtha-fueled fire be hurled toward the city. Because most of its buildings were of pinewood, the flames devoured the greater part of the town and about fifty thousand of its inhabitants. The blaze died out after two days, for pine burns fiercely but not long.

The troops then entered, capturing the survivors and stripping them of their possessions, even plundering the dead (5).

Bugha next marched against other towns whose people had sided with those who had slain Yūsuf ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf, the deputy governor of Armenia, exacting vengeance and punishing all who had dared to oppose him.

That same year the Franks arrived in roughly three hundred ships, intending to raid the Egyptian coast from the direction of Damietta. They burst into the city unexpectedly, killed a great many of its inhabitants, burned the congregational mosque and its pulpit, and carried off about six hundred women—one hundred and twenty-five of them Muslims, the remainder Copts. They seized an enormous quantity of goods, weapons, and other spoils. The populace fled in every direction, and more people drowned in Lake Tinnīs than were taken captive. The Franks then withdrew arrogantly (6), and no one confronted them until they reached their own territory—may Allah curse and disgrace them.

In this same year the summer expedition (ṣāʾifa) was led by ʿAlī ibn Yaḥyā al-Armanī.